Loose Cylinder Head Valve Springs?

[HelloNewman]

I took the mk7 in for carbon cleaning (110k miles) and the repair shop informed me that one of the valve springs was loose and needed to be replaced.

This seems really random and weird? The shop is saying that after the fix the car may burn a significant amount of oil here on out.

 

[hans611]

The commonly referred "carbon cleaning" process on these engines DOES NOT involve removing the "Cylinder head gasket" and cleaning the actual inside of the head....
That service description has to be wrong, they must have meant the intake manifold....?
On these cars, the carbon cleaning should be done with a walnut blaster with an attachment that fits perfectly into the ports of the cylinder head. The head never comes off...
The engine is turned manually until the cylinder being cleaned has the valves closed and then the port itself is cleaned of the carbon deposits, that way no dirty carbon grime falls into the cylinder head.

edit: Not sure what they are doing to your car OP, hopefully they didn't actually remove the head and cleaned the carbon inside the cylinder head....
They also charged you $1,800 (incl. cylinder head bolts, etc) which leads me to believe the actually opened your engine...
It should have been $500-700, all they needed to remove was the intake manifold, but they need that walnut blaster tool which they may not have.
It literally says "check [head] surface for warpage" ... also "adjust valves" I hope they didn't disassemble the head itself as well.... and suddenly one of the valve springs is loose.

 

[Diggs24]

lol, wut

 

[Daks]

Turn around and walk away

 

[hans611]

What OP is saying implies that his car has already been taken apart and they have found a "loose valve spring"

Is this the first time this happens? Good lesson to never take your car to the local "European auto mechanic"

Never heard of someone having the old school "Carbon cleaning" done on their MK7 when they asked for a "Carbon cleaning"

You need to ask for walnut blasting and ask them to show your their machine with the attachment, etc... that way everyone is on the same page lol

 

[Handguns4heaRTs]

please tell us which shop you went to. I'm in SoCal too, and want to make sure I never go there.

 

[HelloNewman]

The commonly referred "carbon cleaning" process on these engines DOES NOT involve removing the "Cylinder head gasket" and cleaning the actual inside of the head....
That service description has to be wrong, they must have meant the intake manifold....?
On these cars, the carbon cleaning should be done with a walnut blaster with an attachment that fits perfectly into the ports of the cylinder head. The head never comes off...
The engine is turned manually until the cylinder being cleaned has the valves closed and then the port itself is cleaned of the carbon deposits, that way no dirty carbon grime falls into the cylinder head.

edit: Not sure what they are doing to your car OP, hopefully they didn't actually remove the head and cleaned the carbon inside the cylinder head....
They also charged you $1,800 (incl. cylinder head bolts, etc) which leads me to believe the actually opened your engine...
It should have been $500-700, all they needed to remove was the intake manifold, but they need that walnut blaster tool which they may not have.
It literally says "check [head] surface for warpage" ... also "adjust valves" I hope they didn't disassemble the head itself as well.... and suddenly one of the valve springs is loose.

This I know. According to them one of the valve springs was loose when they inspected it. I google'd it and apparently 2015 model year Mk7's did have an issue with spring failure but it seemed to ususally occur before 75k miles. There wasnt a lot of information out there. My car is one of the first mk7's in the US, bought it in late 2014. (dec 2014 iirc)

 

[hans611]

I see, they may have realized and spotted a problem with the valves when turning the engine over to get them to close.... Never heard of this problem but a quick search does have a couple of threads here with 2015s as you noted being the issue... hopefully someone that had this problem jumps in..... best of luck, what a nightmare

 

[Handguns4heaRTs]

@HelloNewman which shop did you go to? There are loads of good shops in So Cal.

 

[Handguns4heaRTs]

@HelloNewman

 

[HelloNewman]

Just got the car back today. One of the valve springs was literally broken in half. Replaced all of them as well as the head gasket and timing tensioner. Not sure if VW will cover any of the costs as the car has 110k now. First issue I've ever had with the car.

 

[Acadia18]

One of the valve springs was literally broken in half.

You either don't know what "literally" means or don't know what "half" means

Just kidding. That's crazy as hell. I doubt VW would cover any of it, but never hurts to try. Worst they can do is say no. I still don't know what the hell they did for a carbon cleaning to notice that?

Still. That's wild.

 

[HelloNewman]

You either don't know what "literally" means or don't know what "half" means

Just kidding. That's crazy as hell. I doubt VW would cover any of it, but never hurts to try. Worst they can do is say no. I still don't know what the hell they did for a carbon cleaning to notice that?

Still. That's wild.

They were trying to ask if I had ever over revved the engine. I know for a fact I've never done that + I'm fairly certain an overrev would cause way more catastrophic damage aside from a broken valve spring?

 

[Diggs24]

I think you’re getting scammed TBH.

 

[ElectricEye]

Just got the car back today. One of the valve springs was literally broken in half. Replaced all of them as well as the head gasket and timing tensioner. Not sure if VW will cover any of the costs as the car has 110k now. First issue I've ever had with the car.

My car (a 2015) had a broken valve spring some two and a half years ago.
The local dealer I had it towed to (not my usual dealer) had it for a week or two and couldn't even figure out what was wrong with it.
I had it towed out of there to a VW/Porsche/Audi specialty shop that found the problem.
I had a jb1 on it at the time, but have no idea of that had anything to do with it.
In any event, I had them remove the jb1 when they performed the work.